I have always hated summer. The sun gives me too much energy and I feel erratic and unpredictable, as if someone has placed a hot plate under me and I’m starting to dance to keep my feet from burning. Just as the earth is warming up, I can feel the anxiety rising in me. Day by day, minute by minute, the energy rumbles, starting at the end of winter, through spring, into the shortest day, building slowly, slowly, until suddenly I’m waking up too hot, throat scratchy from the pollen, ripping off the bedsheets, cursing at the birds chittering outside the open window. I had always thought summer was happening to me, but recently I have come to realise that summer has been happening through me. Every year as a grapple with this edginess, behind it is something that is trying to get out, to make itself clear to me, so that it can be burnt like a phoenix in the sun.
My birthday is around the start of summer and it’s always this time of year that life decides to humble me. It is as if I am in a video game and once I move up a level in age, I get a new boss to battle in the form of an old version of myself that has come up to be acknowledged. This year I was humbled in the romance department and in response to this all my bodily insecurities came together in a great team and flew at me as soon as I opened the box of my summer clothes.
I know that it doesn’t really matter what I look like, but yet it really does, tangibly in the real world. I’m not that tall and I’m not particularly curvy so when I am happy, I become round but not in a fashionable way. I look like a kid has drawn a beachball with arms and legs.
My problem is that my day to day joy is not good for my waistline. In happiness I am arrogant and complacent with food. I think everything is going to go my way and is going to be fine, so I don’t worry about anything. Eating is a celebration and I delight in each mouthful. The only time I have successfully lost a lot of weight is when I’ve been grieving. When I first went to university, I became thin quickly. Food became a way to fuel myself, filling up quickly with smoothies or soups. I had to do things calmly and with care, as if I was holding a baby on my chest, or else I’d feel the edges of my vision start closing in and I’d need to lie down. Strangely, I don’t remember feeling thin (in fact, I have never felt thin in my life) but I do remember people talking about my weight when I went home for Christmas.
I have often trodden the line of wondering if it would be possible to snuff out happiness entirely in order to feel what it would be like for my body to be fitting with expectation. Sometimes I try it for a little while – as it is a very persistent, very beguiling voice that says, ‘do it, it’ll be quick’ – but the truth is, it has always felt like violence. I’ve met too many versions of me that are hollow behind the eyes and I can’t keep it up without feeling more and more like a ghost.
It is my challenge this year to figure out how to live healthily, to live well, alongside the fear of being undesirable. It is something that every year the sun asks of me as it burns through me. It is time to look at why my emotions drive me, why I overeat or overexercise, why I cringe at my reflection. It is time to figure out what joy looks like physically on me, as a coat, and to wear it proudly even if it is unfashionable.
